20 Sales: When To Hire Your Head of Sales/ First Reps, What To Look for in 10x Sales Candidates, How To Structure The Hiring Process, How To Onboard New Reps Efficiently, How To Set First Quotas and more with Kyle Parrish, Figma's VP Sales
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 8 December 2021
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kyle Parrish is VP Sales @ Figma, the company that connects everyone in the design process so teams can deliver better products, faster. At Figma, Kyle built the sales engine from scratch to today, with over 100 incredible people in sales. Before Figma, Kyle spent over 5 years at Dropbox in numerous different roles including Head of Sales, where he scaled the Austin, Texas office from 3 to over 80 people to Global Partnerships lead, where he was responsible for growing Dropbox’s partner ecosystem.
In Today’s Episode with Kyle Parrish You Will Learn:
1.) How Kyle first made his way into the world of sales and came to be one of the 3 performing sales reps in a 300+ sales team? How that led to his joining the hypergrowth journey of Dropbox? What led Kyle to make the move from Dropbox to the rocketship that is Figma?
2.) When and Who: Does the founder need to be the person to create the sales playbook? How can a founder know whether it is right to hire sales reps or a Head of Sales first? In terms of ARR, is there a time when you have to have a Head of Sales? Does Kyle agree with Jason Lemkin in terms of bringing in reps, two at a time? Where do founders make the biggest mistakes when it comes to the timing of these hires?
3.) How To Know and Test: What non-obvious characteristics do 10x sales hires have? What questions or case studies does Kyle find to be most revealing in identifying these non-obvious traits? How should founders structure the process for new reps and a Head of Sales? Meeting by meeting, what should we look to achieve?
4.) Setting Up for Success: What does the ideal onboarding process look like for new sales reps? What tasks and processes would Kyle expect new reps to complete within the first month or two on the job? What are the clearest signs of a new rep hire not working out? How should founders approach 1-1 and 360 reviews with their new reps?
5.) Working Together: What is the ideal relationship between the founder and the new Head of Sales? How often should they meet? What should the founder expect from the new Head of Sales? How should the Head of Sales work with the Head of Marketing most efficiently?
Item’s Mentioned In Today’s Episode with Kyle Parrish
Kyle's Favourite Sales Blog Post: The Sales Learning Curve
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome. I'm very excited for the show today. As you've seen over the last month, we've expanded |
| 0:04.0 | 20 to become 20, the media company that brings you interviews with the world's leading |
| 0:08.4 | individuals in their respective fields. Last month, we expanded with 20 growth, and today we launched |
| 0:14.0 | 20 sales, a dedicated series to interviewing the world's best heads of sales to uncover their tactics, |
| 0:19.9 | strategies and experiences, scaling the world's best sales organizations sales to uncover their tactics, strategies and experiences, |
| 0:21.5 | scaling the world's best sales organizations. To kick us off stay with our first episode, |
| 0:26.1 | one of the fastest growing companies in the world, Figma and their head of sales, Carl Parrish. |
| 0:30.6 | For those that do not know, Figma connects everyone in the design process so teams can deliver |
| 0:35.1 | better products faster. At Figma, Carl built the sales engine from |
| 0:38.9 | scratch to today with over 100 incredible people in sales. Before Figma, Carl spent over five years |
| 0:44.8 | at Dropbox in numerous different roles, including a head of sales, where he scaled the Austin, |
| 0:49.0 | Texas office, from three to over 80 people, to global partnerships lead, where he was responsible |
| 0:53.9 | for growing Dropbox partner ecosystem. |
| 0:56.3 | But before we dive into the show with Carl today, |
| 0:58.5 | Salesloft is the leading sales engagement platform, |
| 1:01.5 | helping sales teams drive more revenue |
| 1:03.6 | with the modern revenue workspace. |
| 1:05.4 | It's the one place sales teams can go to prospect, |
| 1:08.6 | manage active deals, and get the insights they need to coach |
| 1:11.8 | seller performance, forecast with accuracy, and find out what steps to take to close more deals. |
| 1:17.6 | Some of the world's leading companies like IBM, Shopify and Stripe, all love and use salesloft, |
| 1:23.2 | and so can you. It's the new way to sell. Find out more at salesloft.com. But it's now time to head |
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